Saturday, January 31, 2015

The latest Blast From the Past is up on the Story and Preview Page. "The Blood Upon the Rose" is a 2100-word short story. It appeared first in Analog (Feb 1991) then in the collection The Nanotech Chronicles. Later it was pirated by a German agent who had gone rogue and sold his clients' stories without the ugly necessity of actually paying the clients. It appeared without payment in the Heyne Verlag collection Lenins Zahn und Stalins Tränen.

The story is set futureward of "Werehouse," which we showcased here a while back. (Hence, the reference, "...people became animals...") Even so there is a quaint reference to "...make the videotape..." The United States at this time is under the control of an ecumenical heresy symbolized by the "star-cross-and-crescent" and everyone is being ecumenically persecuted, proving that the enemy of my enemy may be simply one more enemy. Hence, the odd laundry list of offenses and defiances.

The intent was to tell the story after the manner a fable, so the narrator and the two characters speak in high language.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Now according to the natural order established by Divine
Providence, inferior things are ordained for the purpose of succoring
man's needs by their means. Wherefore the division and appropriation of
things, which are based on human law, do not preclude the fact that man's
needs have to be remedied by means of these very things. Hence whatever
certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the
purpose of succoring the poor.

No wonder the Moderns were so anxious to get rid of Natural Law! Thomas goes on to say:

Since, however, there are many who are in need, while it is impossible
for all to be succored by means of the same thing, each one is entrusted
with the stewardship of his own things, so that out of them he may come
to the aid of those who are in need. Nevertheless, if the need be so
manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be
remedied by whatever means be at hand (for instance when a person is in
some imminent danger, and there is no other possible remedy), then it is
lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another's property,
by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking
theft or robbery.Sed quia multi sunt necessitatem patientes, et non potest ex eadem re
omnibus subveniri, committitur arbitrio uniuscuiusque dispensatio
propriarum rerum, ut ex eis subveniat necessitatem patientibus. Si tamen
adeo sit urgens et evidens necessitas ut manifestum sit instanti
necessitati de rebus occurrentibus esse subveniendum, puta cum imminet
personae periculum et aliter subveniri non potest; tunc licite potest
aliquis ex rebus alienis suae necessitati subvenire, sive manifeste sive
occulte sublatis. Nec hoc proprie habet rationem furti vel rapinae.

Hence, Jean Valjean was guilty of no sin when he stole a loaf of bread to feed the children of his widowed sister, though the secular state (with the post hoc blessing, we assume, of Ayn Rand) chased him his entire life.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Formerly entitled "On the Shore of the Unquiet Sea." Okay, so TOF finished the novella, weighing in at just over 40 kilowords and has sent it over the aether to ANALOG, where its fate abides. We shall see how it turns out.

The opening scene was posted earlier and remains substantially the same. Now for your delectation (or whatever), no less than the second scene!

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Things tend to get noticed only when Americans or perhaps other Westerners get affected. ISIS had killed over 2000 Syrians in the six months prior to executing a Western Journalist and no one in the West seemed to notice. Recently the Kingdom sentenced a man to 1000 lashes for running a liberal website. The site did not even defame Islam. He is unlikely to survive that many lashes. Yet there was the Saudi representative marching in Paris shoulder-to-shoulder with Putin's guy and others in support of freedom of speech. You can cut the hypocrisy with a knife.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The suggestion has been made that predictions made by scientific studies be checked against Actual Results in what TOF joshingly refers to as "The Real World™." A band of intrepid researchers have compared the actual rates of glioma to the rates expected by the seminal Swedish study linking them to cell phone use. The graph to the right covers non-Hispanic white males from 1992/97 to 2008. Corrections were made for the delay of onset. The results are discussed less dauntingly here.

As we can see, the rate of gliomas has remained essentially unchanged even while cell phone use was skyrocketing. The exponential curve is where we would expect to find glioma rates if we took the predictions of the Swedish study as, well, predictions.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

By popular demand, an excerpt from an unfinished story: The Seven Widows appears on the Preview Page for a brief time. It is planned as a telling of the search by a mixed crew of shadows, hounds, and scholars for the Vestiges once held by the Gayshot Bo in the Secret City of Dao Chetty.